Just think how many millions of people use Microsoft products, how many have problems with it and what would happen if the majority of them got in touch with its support division at around the same time...:-)

The Knowledge Base is a very valuable tool - the right keywords and pinpointing the MS product involved usually brings up a myriad of potential solutions.

I have a MS Explorer mouse about 4 years old, it failed :o/ loose connection between wire and mouse

A friend pointed out it may have a 5 year warranty, suprised but it did cost about £65 new.

I phoned them up on a saturday, they said no problem we'll send you a new one, don't need to send the other one back. Phoned on bank holiday monday to give me an update, then on wednesday to see if I was happy with their service.

Only downside is delivery time is 5-10 working days as it's being sent from Germany, but it was apparantly despatched on 31/08 - the day after the Bankholiday Monday of the weekend I called.

I'm pretty happy, especially as I thought i would have to fork out for a new mouse.

As a complete novice with computers, when I had a problem with windows that the manufacturer couldn't solve cos it was a windows issue, I phoned Microsoft and after pleading for some assistance, as an oem customer, I received three one hour calls from their help centre in dublin and they could not have been more helpfull if I had been a paying client. Even phoned up a week later to see how I was getting on!!

used to be abysmal, and I was one (no doubt of many) who wrote about it in the strongest terms. I wrote to Microsoft as well - on many occasions - and finally, no doubt as a result of thousands of complaints, they began to change.

Microsoft now has what I consider to be one of the best support systems in the business. I have used it on many occasions on behalf of clients, and could relate story after story about how support desk people have gone out of their way to be helpful. On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion a MS support person stayed at her desk for an hour after they officially closed on a Friday evening to help me with a particularly tricky registry issue. She stuck with it, even though her colleagues kept reminding her that they were off to the pub, and she went to enormous lengths to nail the problem. I was impressed, not only by her devotion to duty, but by the depth of her knowledge. Having left me with a solution to try over the weekend she phoned me first thing on the next Monday morning to make sure all was well.

Service like that lives on in your mind, and one person like her does more for her compny's image in one call than all the PR executives can do in a week.

The fact that you're being told to look in the knowledge base isn't necessarily the brush off that you might think. Thousands of problems are stored there, together with their solutions, and often a quick ten minutes in the KB does the trick.

I've recently had to ask Microsoft Support for their help and it was the first time. I asked them for help as a last resort thinking they probably wouldn't respond, but was really surprised by how helpful they were. They kept making suggestions and waiting for my response. Over several days they responded around 10 times with useful easy to understand advice. Although I eventually found my own solution to the problem I was having, I must say that they never gave up and kept giving me other options.Well done Microsoft Support I say. (for once!!!)

I've only had to phone Microsoft once(about a year ago) and hope that I never have to again. It was like an FBI interview in which they spent ten minuted seeking a vast array of personal information and details of the manufacturer of my PC before they would even speak to me. I got the impression they were more interested in finding out if I was using dodgy software (which I don't)than in helping me with any problem